1

Chapter 8:

COSMOLOGIES:

HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE1

The truth is no guarantee of belief.

Belief is no guarantee of the truth.

INTRODUCTION

How we can enable sociology and Education to build cumulative, integrative knowledge

over time has been a recurrent theme of this book. This is to ask at least two questions:

what characteristics enable cumulative knowledge-building; and what would enable this

kind of knowledge-building to become widely practised across these fields? Previous

chapters addressed the first question by exploring the kinds of theory and curriculum that

enable and constrain cumulative knowledge. However, that one theory offers more

potential for knowledge-building than its rivals is no guarantee it will becoming widely

adopted. If our aim is to generate powerful explanations that address the pressing

problems evident in society and education, we need, then, to ask: why are some theories

more influential than others, and how can we create not only powerful but also influential

ideas?

This chapter offers a means of answering these questions that complements existing

approaches. As discussed in chapter 1, such issues are typically addressed from one of

two directions. The most common is an externalist focus on social power. Bourdieu

(1988), for example, argues that the relational positions of practices and ideas within a

‘field of stances’ reflects the relational position of their sponsoring agents in a ‘field of

positions’. The influence of particular theories reflects the dominance of particular

actors, by virtue of their possession of ‘academic capital’ (e.g. control of appointments,

1 Draft of chapter 8 of Maton, K. Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education, to be published by Routledge.

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research grants, etc.) and ‘scholastic capital’ (citations, keynote addresses, etc). Most

analyses adopt forms of this general approach, such as emphasising the role of

gatekeepers or the shared values of dominant groups. While they reveal the role played

by forms of social power, as shown in previous chapters, that is not the whole story:

externalism obscures the role played by knowledge itself. A second direction is an

internalist focus on these ideas and practices. This often takes the form of highlighting

the supposedly abstract, obscure and obscurantist nature of marginal theories and down to

earth, accessible, intelligible and clear nature of prominent approaches. However, such

accounts are typically ad hoc, contradictory and undertheorised. To illustrate their

limitations, and to continue the focus of chapter 7, it is useful to compare the positions of

Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein.

Though similar in many ways, the theories of Bourdieu and Bernstein enjoy contrasting

fortunes. Over recent years Bourdieu’s star has risen in the intellectual firmament. His

ideas are being used across a range of disciplines to study a wide array of topics. In

comparison, Bernstein’s profile remains low and largely restricted to studies of

education. Even here, as Power highlights, it is ‘paradoxical that his theories are so little

used within the sociology of education […] his work has enormous potential for

addressing enduring debates and dilemmas within social science and education. And yet

this potential remains largely unrealised’ (2010: 239). This is typically explained by

claiming Bernstein’s theory is too abstract, densely expressed and disconnected from

empirical research. Commentators argue that ‘many of his readers profess to find his

ideas difficult, obscure and elusive’ (Atkinson 1985: 6), accuse him of using ‘a code of

sociologese which is hard to break’ (Barcan, 1993: 156) or claim his use of imagined

examples shows the theory cannot engage with empirical data (Power 2010). Bernstein’s

style is certainly a condensed form of prose, with minimal empirical exposition,

interspersed by complex diagrams expressing the interrelations of concepts. It is as if

substantive objects of study have been reduced for a long time on a low heat, leaving a

highly condensed conceptual description, a kind of theoretical stock cube to which the

reader is expected to add their own empirical examples. Thus the bulk of his sociological

theory comprises three slim volumes of papers (1977, 1990, 2000).

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In contrast, Bourdieu presents his ideas in a highly textured, prosaic style, embodied in a

large corpus of often heavy books thick with empirical descriptions that are

complemented by tables and graphs displaying analysed data.1 Bourdieu writes as if paid

by the word, Bernstein as if paying for the paper and ink himself. Nonetheless, Bourdieu

has been similarly criticised as dense and obscure. Commentators note ‘the renowned

complexity, if not obscurity of his conceptual framework’ (Nash, 2004: 609) and

characterise his style as ‘unnecessarily long-winded, obscure, complex and intimidatory’

(Jenkins, 1992: 10):

Idiosyncratic usages and neologisms, allied to frequently repetitive, long

sentences which are burdened down with a host of sub-clauses and

discursive detours, combine with complicated diagrams and visual schemes

to confront the reader with a task that, many ... find daunting.

(Jenkins, 1992: 9).

Indeed, ‘virtually everyone complains about Bourdieu's dense and highly euphemised

style’ (Nash, 2001: 65).

Empirical exposition is no insurance against a theory being viewed as dense and obscure,

and this, in turn, is not fatal to its widespread adoption. Moreover, style of presentation is

not the same as a theory’s potential contribution to empirical research. Obscurity is in the

eye of the beholder and everybody is somebody’s bore. Claims that a theory is ‘obscure’

only obscure the issues. As Moore (2006: 35) argues, it is less that a theory is abstract

and more the form taken by abstraction that is important. Chapter 7 analysed forms of

abstraction and condensation and argued that the mode of theorising exemplified by

Bernstein’s work offers more capacity for knowledge-building. (As emphasised, this is

not to dismiss Bourdieu’s theory - both underpin LCT; see chapters 1 and 2, this chapter,

and Maton 2005a, 2005b). The question becomes why the relative statuses of these

modes are not more equal, if not reversed. This reaches beyond two theories: fields such

as sociology, Education and cultural studies are dominated by the segmental modality,

including Foucauldian, Deleuzian, Derridean, Habermasian, Butlerian, constructivist and

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post-structuralist theories. If these theories have less capacity for knowledge-building,

what is it they offer? Why do epistemologically weaker theories exert such influence?

KNOWERS, COSMOLOGIES AND AXIOLOGIES

To address these issues requires developing Bernstein’s model. As discussed in chapters

4 and 5, his framework brings knowledge as an object into view, and illuminates fields

with explicit, cumulative structures of knowledge. The basis of identity and insight in

such fields lies with their ‘hierarchical’ knowledge structures and the adoption of a theory

appears to actors motivated by its comparative explanatory power: it explains more

empirical phenomena within fewer, more tightly integrated propositions. However, the

model is less explicit about the basis of segmented, ‘horizontal’ fields. These are

characterised as exhibiting weaker ‘verticality’ and weaker ‘grammaticality’: theories are

strongly segmented from one another and define their empirical referents ambiguously

(chapter 7). It is thus unclear where the ‘strength’ of such theories lie and why they are

preferred over others.

Bernstein recovers knowledge but to fully understand the humanities and social sciences

we need to also recover knowers. As argued in previous chapters, social fields of

practice are more than structures of knowledge. They also comprise actors with passions,

hopes, desires, emotions and so forth, whose practices legitimate different kinds of actors.

Social fields thereby comprise knowledge-knower structures (chapter 4) which classify,

assign, arrange and hierarchise not only what but also who is considered legitimate. The

adoption of a theory is thus not simply an issue of comparative explanatory power. For

example, some fields base legitimacy on being the right kind of knower (chapters 4 and

5). Previously, social realists have attempted to understand these practices by analysing

‘standpoint’ theories that emphasise social categories of knowers (chapters 2 and 5;

Moore & Muller 2010). Though these have played key roles in the history of fields such

as cultural studies, they currently occupy only a minor position within sociology and

Education. To understand these fields we need, then, to broaden the analysis.

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Previous chapters discussed other bases for knower codes, such as ‘the cultivated gaze’

(chapter 5). This chapter builds on those analyses by exploring axiological cosmologies

that involve the ‘moral charging’ of practices and beliefs through a process of axiological

condensation. This process, I argue, creates relations between actors and their practices

that are more mediated than standpoint theories but which, nonetheless, emphasise the

attributes of knowers as key to legitimacy within the field. The chapter also expands the

notion of ‘semantic density’ by showing how meanings condensed within symbols need

not be descriptions of the empirical world (the focus of Bernstein’s ‘grammar’) but may

be feelings, political sensibilities, taste, values, morals, and so forth. To do so, I draw

more explicitly on the ideas of Bourdieu that underpin LCT, including the concepts of

field, status, stances and misrecognition (embodying my emphasis that this and chapter 7

are not arguing “for Bernstein” or “against Bourdieu”). I shall begin by briefly outlining

these ideas and how they fit within the wider conceptual framework developed through

the book.

Cosmologies

Ernest Gellner described an ‘ideology’ as ‘a system of ideas with a powerful sex appeal’.

(Words, p.2). A ‘cosmology’ is what makes one system of ideas sexy and another not so

hot. More formally, a cosmology is a constitutive feature of social fields that underlies

the ways practices and actors are differentially valued. Every social field has a

cosmology, though its nature varies between fields and may change over time. In fields

like the natural sciences, cosmologies tend to be primarily epistemological and the ‘sex

appeal’ of theories is typically (though not always or solely) related to their comparative

explanatory power.2 In fields like sociology and Education, cosmologies currently tend

to be more axiological and theories are valued according to their moral or political worth.

Before exploring such axiological cosmologies, two questions raised by chapter 7 for any

theorisation aspiring to knowledge-building must be addressed: how do new concepts fit

within the existing framework?; and how can they be translated into descriptions of the

empirical world? Here I briefly delineate the first (see Figure 8.1), before illustrating the

second; in chapter 9 I shall discuss how the concepts are being used empirically.

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Figure 8.1: Schematic outline of the framework

legitimation device

|

legitimation codes

|

cosmologies / gazes

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constellations and clusters

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knowledge-knower structures

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substantive practices, ideas and beliefs

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• legitimation device

Chapter 3 argued that the epistemic device and pedagogic device represent two facets of

an overarching generative mechanism underlying all social fields. This legitimation

device is the means whereby social fields are created, reproduced, transformed and

changed, through the distribution, recontextualisation and evaluation of legitimacy

(Maton 2005b). It is a ruler (in both senses) of a field: whoever controls the device can

set the ‘rules of the game’ by making attributes characterising their own practices the

basis of legitimate participation, achievement, hierarchy and status. It is thus the focus of

struggles among agents within the field, for to control the device is to establish specific

principles of legitimation as dominant and valorise certain practices and attributes over

others.

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• legitimation codes

At present, LCT analyses these principles in terms of Autonomy, Density, Temporality,

Specialisation and Semantics (of which this book explores the last two).3 The device is

analytically distinguished from these five dimensions because they do not exhaust the full

range of principles underlying social fields - others remain to be discovered. The

‘settings’ or code modalities of these dimensions (e.g. ER+, SR-; SG+, SD-) provide a

means for describing a social field as representing a particular structuring ‘X’ as one of a

range of possible structurings (e.g. W, X, Y, Z).4

• cosmologies

The realisation of the ‘X’ at a particular social and historical juncture represent a field’s

cosmology: the ordering or logic of the belief system or vision of the world embodied by

activities within the field. In other words, a specific cosmology is a realisation of a

specific modality of legitimation codes at a particular point in time and space. Chapter 5

discusses a range of ‘gazes’ underpinning social fields. Gazes realise principles of

legitimation at the level of individual actors: a ‘gaze’ is an individual realisation of a

social cosmology.5 The distinction between codes and cosmologies (or gazes) allows the

possibility that a code modality ‘X’ will be realised as a different cosmology (or gaze) at

other times and places. Cosmologies take different forms (such as epistemological and

axiological) and underpin the classifying, assigning and hierarchising of practices and

actors within the knowledge-knower structures of fields.

• constellations

In this chapter I propose this happens through a process of association or ‘clustering’,

whereby stances come to be grouped into constellations that are related in various ways,

such as opposition and complementarity, to other constellations. These clusters and

constellations are instanciations of cosmologies - behind any cluster or constellation lies a

cosmology, a way of seeing the world. Crucially, constellations are differentially

valorised: some are viewed as better than others. The cosmological basis for this varies

among social fields. One basis lies with their degree of emphasis on epistemological

and/or axiological issues. In fields like sociology and Education, constellations are

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related to knowers through a process of axiological condensation, which I discuss further,

below.

• knowledge-knower structures

Cosmologies and constellations mediate relations between legitimation codes and

knowledge-knower structures (chapters 4 and 5). The latter describe the topography of

fields but raise two questions. First, what generates these features? Legitimation codes

conceptualise the principles underlying fields but not how such codes come to be realised

as different forms of fields. Secondly, what constitutes these topographical features?

Bernstein describes the ‘segments’ of horizontal knowledge structures as disciplines,

‘isms’ or approaches, but this neither exhausts the features of fields nor conceptualises

what such segments comprise. The notions of cosmologies and constellations address

these questions.

In short, I argue that a cosmology structures fields through the different ways it generates,

maintains and changes constellations, and that to understand subjects such as sociology

and Education one needs to explore the way these constellations are axiologically

charged. To explore these two processes I mirror the analysis of chapter 7 by analysing,

first, the internal relations of fields, and then their external relations, before bringing the

two together to address why segmental theories may be dominant and cumulative theories

marginalised. I should emphasise I am analysing the current state of fields such as

sociology and Education, not their necessary state. Thus, I conclude the chapter by

considering how this state of affairs can be changed.

INTERNAL RELATIONS: CONSTELLATIONS AND CLUSTERS

In astronomy a constellation is a grouping of stars that make an imaginary picture in the

sky. Though they appear to viewers to have an ontological basis to their coherence, all

stars in a constellation need not be gravitationally bound to one another. There may

indeed be a relationship among them – for example, Pleiades is an open cluster of stars

that appear in the constellation of Taurus and are gravitationally bound to one another –

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but this is not necessarily so. Similarly, constellations are understood here as social and

symbolic groupings that appear to have coherence from a particular point in space and

time to actors with a particular cosmology or way of viewing the social world. Thus

which actors and stances are included in a constellation, and relations between

constellations, may vary according to the viewers as well as change over time.

The generation of constellations involves a process whereby ideas, practices, beliefs and

attributes (or, following Bourdieu, ‘stances’) are grouped together and contrasted to other

groups. Each stance is then viewed as both bound to all other stances within its

constellation and opposed to all stances in contrasting constellations.6 To illustrate this

process we can consider an influential example of constellationality in Education

revolving around the terms ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’.

Since the 1990s a range of theories, ideas and practices have been grouped together and

associated with the terms ‘student-centred’ or ‘learning’ and contrasted with another

group associated with the terms ‘teacher-centred’ or ‘teaching’. For example, key figures

advocating constructivist approaches argue there has been an unprecedented shift in

education:

During the 1990s, we have witnessed a convergence of learning theories never

before encountered. These contemporary learning theories are based on

substantively different ontologies and epistemologies than were traditional

objectivist foundations for instructional design… The past decade, we believe, has

witnessed the most substantive and revolutionary changes in learning theory in

history ... We have entered a new age in learning theory. Never … have there

been so many theoretical foundations that share so many assumptions and

common foundations.

(Jonassen & Land, 2000, p. iii, v-vi; cf. Kember, 1997).

This proclaimed revolution includes a wide range of theories generically described as

‘student-centred learning environments’, including: problem-based learning, project-

based learning, inquiry-oriented pedagogies such as open-ended learning environments,

cognitive apprenticeships, constructivist learning environments, microworlds, goal-based

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scenarios, anchored instruction, social-mediated communication, authentic learning, and

others. This constellations of stances is contrasted strongly with ‘teacher-centred’

stances. For example, Jonassen and Land (2000: viii) draw on a wide range of literature

to list contrasting positions in a Table reproduced here as Table 8.1.

Table 8.1. Traditional instruction versus student-centred learning environments

Instruction Student-Centred Learning Environments transmission/acquisition interpretation, construction

mastery, performance meaning making external reality internal reality

dualism, absolutism cultural relativism, perspectival abstract, symbolic contextualized, authentic, experiential

individually interpreted socially negotiated, co-constructed mind-centred community-based, culturally mediated

directed intentional reductionist complex, self-organizing

individual collaborative idealist, rational pragmatist

encoding, retention, retrieval articulation and reflection internal, mental social

receptive, reproductive constructive symbolic reasoning situated learning

psychology anthropology, sociology, ethnography laboratory in situ theoretical everyday

central processing architecture distributed architecture objective, modelable experiential, interpretive

symbol processor symbol builder disembodied experiential

conceptual, memorial perceptual atomistic, decomposable gestalt

independent emergent possessed distributed

objective, stable, fixed subjective, contextualized, fluid well-structured ill-structured

decontextualized embedded in experience compliant self-regulated

Source: Jonassen & Land (2000: viii)

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This list of stances may appear arbitrary or random but, I argue, constellations reflect a

cosmology and so represent instances of principles. To illustrate this, one can reorder

Table 8.1 into four clusters of stances based on semantic gravity, structure / agency,

sociality, and epistemology. These are presented in Table 8.2 as two constellations at

opposing poles of a field. There are, of course, other ways of arranging these

characteristics – the intention here is to highlight the structured nature of constellations.

Semantic gravity

One cluster of stances reflects an opposition between stronger and weaker context-

dependence of meaning, or polarised strengths of semantic gravity. Teacher-centred

stances are described as ‘decontextualised’, ‘abstract, symbolic’, ‘theoretical’,

‘conceptual’, and distanced from experience (‘disembodied’, ‘objective’). In contrast,

student-centred stances are ‘contextualised’ or ‘in situ’, closer to the ‘authentic,

experiential’ reality of learners, less abstract and more rooted in the ‘subjective’ and the

‘everyday’. The experiences of learners are a touchstone: ‘experiential’ and ‘experience’

appear in the student-centred constellation four times.

Structure/agency

A second cluster reflects the longstanding ‘structure Vs agency’ debate in the social

sciences. Teacher-centred stances are viewed as involving the imposition (‘directed’) of

‘stable, fixed’, ‘objective’ external structures onto the minds of ‘compliant’, ‘receptive’

and ‘reproductive’ learners. In contrast, student-centred stances are equated with

‘interpretation’ and ‘constructive’ ‘meaning making’ by ‘self-organizing’, ‘intentional’

learners. ‘Agency’ here is identified with the agency of learners rather than of teachers.

Sociality

A third opposition is between individualistic and communal practices and beliefs. The

teacher-centred constellation includes ‘individual’, ‘atomistic’, ‘independent’ stances,

while the student-centred constellation comprises ‘social’, ‘community-based’,

‘collaborative’ and holistic (‘gestalt’) stances.

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Epistemologies

The poles are also identified with different ontologies, epistemologies, disciplines and

approaches. ‘Teacher-centred’ is equated with the study of ‘external reality’ (understood

as ‘atomistic’) through ‘objective’, ‘modelable’ ways of thinking and laboratory-based

psychology. ‘Student-centred’ is associated with studying the inner life of the mind, and

adopting cultural relativism, perspectivism and approaches that purport to provide

insiders’ perspectives on their everyday experiences within a more holistic approach.

Table 8.2: Teacher-centred and student-centred constellations, grouped into clusters Teacher-centred constellation Student-centred constellation Weaker semantic gravity Stronger semantic gravity abstract, symbolic contextualized, authentic, experiential idealist, rational pragmatist symbolic reasoning situated learning laboratory in situ theoretical everyday objective, modelable experiential, interpretive disembodied experiential conceptual, memorial perceptual decontextualized embedded in experience Structure Agency transmission/acquisition interpretation, construction mastery, performance meaning making directed intentional reductionist complex, self-organizing encoding, retention, retrieval articulation and reflection symbol processor symbol builder receptive, reproductive constructive objective, stable, fixed subjective, contextualized, fluid well-structured ill-structured compliant self-regulated Low sociality High sociality individually interpreted socially negotiated, co-constructed individual collaborative mind-centred community-based, culturally mediated

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internal, mental social atomistic, decomposable gestalt independent emergent possessed distributed central processing architecture distributed architecture Positivism Hermeneutics external reality internal reality internal, mental social atomistic, decomposable gestalt dualism, absolutism cultural relativism, perspectival psychology anthropology, sociology, ethnography laboratory in situ objective, modelable experiential, interpretive The distinction between ‘teacher-centred’ and ‘student-centred’ thereby involves binary

constellations, reflecting at least four principles of opposition. However, this is not the

only form they can take: relations within and relations between constellations may vary.

First, relations among their constituents may be stronger or weaker (in similar fashion to

‘verticality’; see chapter 7). In this example, relations among stances are typically held to

be relatively strong. Advocates of student-centred approaches often describe student

group work as necessarily collective, agential and negotiated, whether students wish to

engage in such work or not, and while in reality such practices may vary from all students

working together to one student dividing up individualised tasks among the group.7 One

effect of stronger internal relations is that actors associated with one stance of a

constellation are associated with all its other stances (whether they explicitly discuss,

engage in or agree with those stances) and set in opposition to all stances from opposing

constellations. For example, arguing that weaker semantic gravity (such as abstraction) is

valuable for cumulative learning may be understood as, among other things, atomistic

positivism which constructs learners as incapable of collaborative meaning-making.

Secondly, relations between constellations may vary. This example embodies relatively

strong boundaries between binary constellations - authors advocating student-centred

approaches rarely if ever describe students choosing to be taught didactically as learners

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exercising agency. Other constellations, however, may overlap, complement each other

or be related to several others. As Freebody et al (2008) highlight, the construction of

‘teacher-centred’ and ‘student-centred’ as oppositional obscures the possibility of

combining stances from both poles, despite this being common in the everyday classroom

practices of teachers.

That relations within and between constellations vary highlights the situated nature of

their construction. The constituent stances of and strong boundaries between ‘teacher-

centred’ and ‘student-centred’ poles are a portrayal of the field by actors advocating

particular stances at a particular time from particular positions in that field. In

constructing such a vision, they are effectively attempting to delimit the range of possible

stances one can take and the way they are combined. Constellations describe, in

Bourdieu’s terms (2000), the ‘range of possibles’ in the field. Here a Bourdieuan

analysis would highlight the vested interests of a cosmology’s advocates. For example,

the above range of possibles for learning environments is often advanced by educational

technology researchers advocating constructivist approaches that, they believe, are more

suited to new forms of technology. However, my concern here is with the forms of

knowledge practices embodied by such portraits. As such, I now turn to consider their

external relations.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS: AXIOLOGICAL CONDENSATION

If constellations define the range of possible stances within a field, the question becomes

why some are more widely advocated or adopted than others. I stated earlier that the ‘sex

appeal’ of theories in fields dominated by ‘epistemological cosmologies’ is typically

related to their comparative explanatory power, while for fields dominated by

‘axiological cosmologies’ this lies with how they construct knowers. These are not ideal

types. Rather, one difference among fields is the degree to which their cosmologies are

epistemological and/or axiological or, using LCT(Specialisation), the degree to which

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they emphasise epistemic relations to objects and/or social relations to subjects. At the

level of cosmologies these relations have their own specificity:

- epistemic relation strength refers to the degree of emphasis on explanatory power

(internal coherence and worldly corroboration or ‘verticality’ and ‘grammaticality’);

and;

- social relation strength refers to the degree of emphasis on the attributes of knowers

(which can take a variety of forms).

Fields where epistemic relations are relatively strong and social relations are relatively

weak (knowledge code) are dominated by epistemological cosmologies; those where

these strengths are reversed (knower code), are dominated by axiological cosmologies.

One can also describe fields dominated by both (elite code) or by neither (relativist code).

My focus here is on knower-code fields and theories whose emphasis lies more on social

relations to knowers and, specificially, where these social relations are not direct or

explicit – the ideal knower is not necessarily delimited by a social category. Instead, this

social relation to knowers may be mediated via a process of axiological condensation that

infuses constellations of stances with moral, political or affective significance.

Axiological condensation involves a kind of ‘moral charging’ of stances. For example, a

review of literature lists a series of tenets for student-centred learning:

1. the reliance on active rather than passive learning,

2. an emphasis on deep learning and understanding,

3. increased responsibility and accountability on the part of the student,

4. an increased sense of autonomy in the learner

5. an interdependence between teacher and learner,

6. mutual respect within the learner teacher relationship,

7. and a reflexive approach to the teaching and learning process on the part of

both teacher and learner.

(Lea et al. 2003: 322; emphases added; cf. Brandes & Ginnis, 1986; Gibbs 1995).

These ‘tenets’ claim positive attributes for student-centred stances and project negative

attributes onto other stances. By describing ‘active rather than passive learning’,

‘increased sense of autonomy’ and ‘increased responsibility and accountability’, other

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approaches are portrayed as passive and involving less autonomy, responsibility and

accountability. If not being contrasted in this way, such characteristics would be shared

by all forms of pedagogy and thus unworthy of comment. Similarly, argument for

approaches such as ‘authentic learning’ often include such proclamations as: ‘there is a

need to humanise the online experience with greater compassion, empathy and open-

mindedness’ (Herrington, et al. 2003: 69). The terms used possess a moral charge, such

as ‘authentic learning’ and its association with ‘deep and lifelong learning’ (p. 64) and

‘real world relevance and utility’ (p. 62). ‘Authentic learning’ is thereby opposed by its

proponents to approaches that, by implication, are cruel, unempathic and close-minded,

and offer inauthentic, shallow, short-lived and irrelevant learning. This moral charging

can also take on a political dimension, such as claims that design-based research is

‘socially responsible’ (Reeves et al 2005) or widespread self-descriptions of post-

structuralist approaches as ‘critical theory’, in contrast to other approaches that are

presumably socially irresponsible or uncritical.

In short, intellectual stances may axiologically condense extra-intellectual stances, such

as moral, social, emotional, aesthetic, ethical or political positions. Returning to Table

8.2, the teacher-centred constellation is constructed as an individualistic creed (with its

neoliberal connotations) and equated with the distance from everyday experiences of an

ivory tower (with its connotations of elitism), while opposed to the social and collective

and to notions of ‘agency’ (with their echoes of social and political movements from

below). Moreover, teacher-centred stances are associated with tradition and the past, in

contrast to the ‘never before encountered ... revolutionary’ student-centred constellation

(Jonassen & Land, 2000, p. iii, v-vi). Thus, the student-centred constellation is positively

charged and the teacher-centred constellation is negatively charged. The question this

raises is: on what basis do stances become charged? To explore this process, I shall

consider in turn the epistemic and social relations of fields dominated by axiological

cosmologies, highlighting two key issues: first, the meanings condensed within stances

may bear little relation to empirical evidence; and, secondly, the highly mediated nature

of relations to knowers.

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Epistemic relations: Structures of feeling

Chapter 7 shows how the cumulative modality of theorising involves epistemological

condensation: higher-level, more abstracted concepts condense the meaning of lower-

level concepts and, ultimately, empirical descriptions of substantive phenomena.

Concepts can thereby exhibit relatively strong semantic density, the degree to which

meaning is condensed within symbols (terms, concepts, phrases, expressions, gestures,

etc). Terms like ‘teacher-centred’ and ‘student-centred’ can exhibit similarly strong

semantic density but of a different kind: they may condense less an empirical description

of, and more an orientation or attitude to the social world: axiological condensation. In

other words, rather than condensing a structure of meaning, they condense a structure of

feeling.

The term ‘structure of feeling’ is used here because there is often limited empirical

research evidence to support the moral or political charge that stances possess. For

example, a review of evidence for student-centred approaches concluded:

After a half-century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal

guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique. In

so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly

supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based

minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners. Even

for students with considerable prior knowledge, strong guidance while learning is

most often found to be equally effective as unguided approaches.

(Kirschner et al. 2006: 83-84).

Similarly, since the 1970s many educational researchers have argued that weakening

boundaries between subject areas, appealing to students’ everyday experiences and

facilitatory pedagogy helps learners from marginalised social groups to succeed. A

wealth of research over that period shows these well-intentioned practices can

disadvantage the very learners they are intended to help.8 Yet, the assumption that

‘progressivist’ or ‘constructivist’ pedagogies are necessarily socially progressive remains

widespread among their advocates. In such cases, approaches can take on the appearance

of faith-based religions - belief is all important, including the belief that there must be

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evidence supporting the beliefs. This can involve a ‘certainty-complacency spiral’,

where repeated assertions iteratively reinforce a sense of certainty that claims are well-

founded and encourage complacency about questioning their empirical basis.9 Thus, just

as the stances of a constellation may not be (metaphorically speaking) gravitationally

bound to one another, so the structure of feeling associated with a constellation may not

be epistemologically based: a relatively weak epistemic relation.

Mediated social relations to knowers

Axiological cosmologies emphasise the attributes of knowers as the basis of legitimacy.

However, unlike standpoint theories, they focus not on their social categories but on what

actors’ choices show about them as moral beings - moral identity rather than social

identity. In other words, relations between stances and knowers are mediated by the

values condensed within constellations. The social relation of axiological cosmologies is

thus weaker than for standpoint theories but still strong relative to epistemological

cosmologies.

At the level of individual actors, an axiological cosmologiy is realised as a cultivated

gaze (chapter 5) gained through immersion in the norms of the field and displayed

through the appropriate choice of stances. As Bourdieu argues, ‘taste classifies, and it

classifies the classifier’ (1984: 6): your choices of films, furniture, music, hobbies or

clothes say something about you. Similarly, your choice of terms, theories, writing style,

figures, use of quotations, titles and so forth, offer messages about what kind of person

you are, by virtue of the constellation in which these stances are assigned. Such moral

positioning works through the habituses or gazes of actors, semi-consciously, in a similar

manner to the way we ‘read’ people’s accents, clothes, physical gait, etc. Thus, one’s

intellectual choices classify, assign and hierarchise, and they morally classify, assign and

hierarchise the classifier. They show whether your heart is in the right place, your morals

and political affiliations correct, and so whether you are one of us or one of them. In

other words, the axiological cosmology generates a hierarchical knower structure

(chapter 4), a ranking of actors based on how moral, righteous, virtuous, or politically

progressive they are considered to be.

19

An analogous process to axiological condensation was identified by Cohen (1973) in his

study of youth subcultures in the 1960s. In media reports of violence between youth

groups, the names of the groups (Mods and Rockers) became short-hand for ‘delinquent

youth’ and symbolized by their clothing styles and musical tastes. A short-circuiting

effect along the chain of symbolizations thereby saw delinquency reduced to style.

Similarly, with axiological condensation ‘teaching’ may become short-hand for ‘teacher-

centred’ and thence for authorative imposition, disempowerment of students,

disengagement from the experiences of learners, social conservativism and working for

the interests of dominant social groups. In contrast, ‘learning’ can become understood as

connoting constructivism, creation ‘from below’, empowerment, engagement with

learners’ lived experiences, social progressivism, political radicalism and working for the

interests of dominated ‘Others’. Actors who use the terms ‘teaching’ or ‘teaching and

learning’ (or, worse, ‘transmission and acquisition’) rather than ‘learning and teaching’ or

‘learning’ may be constructed as conservative, whatever their political affiliation or the

effects of their practices.10 The nature of these mediated relations to knowers is thus

crucial to understanding how stances and actors become axiological charged and

positioned within social fields. To explore this relationship, I return to the issue with

which this chapter began: why segmental theories are more influential than cumulative

theories in fields like sociology and Education.

POSITIONING THEORIES: LATITUDES AND ALTITUDES

The basis of positioning in axiological cosmologies lies with how stances (and actors) are

viewed as constructing knowers as subjects and as objects. By ‘knowers as subjects’ I

refer to how stances relate to their practitioners; and by ‘knowers as objects’ I mean how

they relate to the aspect of the world they are oriented towards, where that is understood

anthromorphically as involving knowers. (These equate to the social relation to knowers

as subjects, and the epistemic relation to knowers as objects of study). In terms of

theories, this becomes: relations to authors, researchers and readers, and relations to

actors being studied, respectively. To recap, the ‘cumulative modality’ of theorising

20

enables knowledge-building over time and across empirical phenomena (chapter 7).

Internally, it condenses empirical descriptions into higher-order concepts; externally,

‘languages of description’ translate between theory and different data. In contrast, the

‘segmented modality’ of theorising has less such capacity by virtue of its weaker vertical

relations between concepts and positing of a ‘gaze’ for enacting theory. These modalities

are, I argue, constructed as representing different latitudes and altitudes with respect to

their relations to knowers as subjects and objects, which are differently positioned within

axiological cosmologies. To explore this, I return to the example of the theories of

Bourdieu and Bernstein.

Knowers as subjects: latitudes

Though the capacity of cumulative theories to condense empirical descriptions into

concepts of greater abstraction and generality may lead them to be described as ‘obscure’,

this lightens the discourse by reducing the need for lengthy descriptions of each term,

enabling more information to be brought into relation. For example, the following

summary of chapter 7 condenses over 8,000 words of prose:

• Cumulative modality (e.g. Bernstein’s framework)

o internal relations: SG-, SD+

o external language: SG+, SD-; ER+, SR-

• Segmental modality (e.g. Bourdieu’s framework)

o internal relations: SG+, SD-

o external gaze: SG+, SD-; ER-, SR+

However, while lightening discourse it also raises the price of entry to that discourse –

one needs to know what the symbols mean to make sense of the summary. So whether it

is experienced as obscure depends on whether actors have that knowledge or the

opportunities and dispositions to acquire it. Why do not more actors do so? Leaving

aside social questions of access (as my focus is the form taken by knowledge practices),

one reason may be that cumulative theorising is constructed as constraining the creativity

and agency of actors. Its capacity to relate concepts to data with relative precision (a

stronger ‘knowledge-grammar’) enables knowledge-building because there are

intersubjectively shared ways of deciding what counts as data and how to interpret that

21

data (a stronger epistemic relation). External languages of description for different

objects of study also enable a higher degree of explanatory latitude: the capacity to

explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, the modality can also be constructed as

offering less space for actors to make what they will of the concepts. It can appear to be,

as Moss (2001: 117) summarises perceptions of Bernstein’s work, ‘a closed, theoretical

edifice of baroque proportions, which allows for no dialogue. Either one accepts it all

and becomes a slave to its categories, or one can find no use for it.’

In comparison, theories like those of Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Habermas and Bourdieu

have weaker powers of empirical description and are based on a ‘gaze’ for translating

between theory and data. For example, Bourdieu’s concepts have been described as ‘an

inkblot test used as a stimulus for the imagination’ (Gorard 2004: 9); similarly, concepts

such as ‘governmentality’ and ‘biopower’ (Foucault) and ‘assemblage’ (Deleuze) are

metaphors that stimulate thinking but their relation to the empirical world is typically

vague. This can be constructed as offering greater interpretive latitude and a lower price

of entry, because actors have more space for personal interpretations of the theory.

One example is Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’. Concluding a survey of uses of the

concept, Reay (2004) quotes from a previous article by herself:

paradoxically the conceptual looseness of habitus also constitutes a potential

strength. It makes possible adaptation rather than the more constricting

straightforward adoption of the concept within empirical work

(1995: 357; emphases added; cf. Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 35-36).

Reay also twice quotes Bourdieu’s claim that ‘one cannot grasp the most profound logic

of the social world unless one becomes immersed in the specificity of an empirical

reality’ (1993, p. 271). What is meant here by ‘adaptation’ and ‘adoption’? The

cumulative modality’s languages of description allow the systematic adaptation of

concepts to become immersed in the specificities of an empirical reality, but Bourdieu’s

mode of theorising does not include such languages (chapter 7). So, for Reay,

‘adaptation’ has a more interpretive meaning and Bourdieu’s quote is understood as

meaning the immersion of the researcher rather than the concept in an empirical reality –

22

knower code rather than knowledge code. Conversely, ‘more constricting

straightforward adoption’ refers to the kind of precision achieved by the cumulative

modality. Reay is thus positing a trade-off between referential precision and hermeneutic

space or between explanatory and interpretive latitudes.

Bernstein’s model of ‘knowledge structures’ describes empirical ambiguity as a weakness

(‘weaker grammar’). However, in this example, the axiological cosmology of the

sociology of education constructs it as a strength. Weaker epistemic relations to objects

of study are posited as providing more space for social relations to subjects to flourish.

Thanks to the binary constellations of the field, interpretive latitude can in turn be

associated with notions of creativity and agency for actors, and explanatory latitude

constructed as the domination of established frameworks over actors’ meaning-making

and the imposition of concepts onto data. Thus, what enables portrayals of theories as

involving agency or constraint, being an ‘exclusive club’ - as Power (2010: 244)

describes the appearance of Bernstein’s work - or open to all-comers, is an axiological

cosmology that associates cumulative and segmental theories with contrasting

constellations of stances.

Knowers as objects: altitudes

Theories are associated with different understandings of the social world that are

allocated to different altitudes above that world, looking down from above or providing a

view from below. Cumulative theorising acknowledges what Bernstein terms a

‘discursive gap’ between abstract concepts and empirical descriptions and provides a

means for systematically traversing that gap. Thus theory and data remain in dialogue

through the translation device of languages of description. Segmental theorising does not

recognise this distance or provide an explicit means of translation. In the work produced

by this modality of theorising, theoretical constructs and empirical descriptions (if data is

included) can appear seamlessly interwoven. For example, much Bourdieuan,

Foucauldian and Deleuzian writing comprises allusive, metaphorical accounts of

empirical phenomena or data (such as quotes from interviews) that are redescribed in

theoretical terms without explanation of their relations.11 The result is less a dialogue

23

between theory and data than a monologue in which the empirical is subjugated to the

discursive rules of the theoretical. Meaning is less transformed by theory than overlaid

by theory or by the theory-laden interpretation of the author(s). This lack of explicit

transformation of meaning can be constructed as doing less violence to meaning-making

activities in the social world. By denying a gap between theory and data such work can

be constructed as less abstracted from the concrete, experiential reality of the social

world, a world conceived as comprising knowers.

Ironically, such work is replete with highly abstract concepts and rarely involves subjects.

As Kitching’s analysis of student essays using post-structuralist theory shows, it involves

employing metaphors that

conjure up an unpeopled world of things – often a mechanical or mechanistic

world; frequently a world of spatial or geographical things (sites, locations,

bases). ... But there are no clearly discernible people ... Of course, there is

movement in this world, but it too is mechanically or inanimately produced by

fields, forces and, above all, power.

(2008: 20-21; original emphases).

This impersonal, cold world of things and forces extends to apparently humanistic terms

such as ‘subject’, ‘subjectivity’ and ‘bodies’, which are typically decontextualised from

real human beings. Indeed, unlike standpoint theories, the author is removed from the

discourse – ‘the prose itself appears to have no subject or creator’ (Kitching 2008: 21).

This is important because many social science and humanities disciplines remain

dominated by binary constellations reinforced by the ‘two cultures’ debate between

science and the humanities that began in the late 1950s (which itself inherited similar

binaries from previous debates). Space precludes detailed discussion (see Maton, 2005b,

chapters 7 and 8); here it must suffice to say that fields such as sociology have

experienced successive waves of anti-positivist ‘anthropomorphism’ (Gellner, 1968).

This recurrent argument proclaims that though the natural world may be subject to

materialistic, mechanistic, determinist, external causal explanations, human society is a

human tale to be told by its participants in a humanist register. Binary constellations are

established between, on the one hand, science, the abstract, causal etc. and, on the other

24

hand, humanism, the concrete, meaning-making, etc. The example of ‘teacher-centred’ /

‘student-centred’ is yet another realization of this cosmology (despite proponents’ claims

of ‘revolution’). As Gellner put it:

This, then, is the familiar overall confrontation: a granular, cold, technical and

naturalistic world confronts a holistic, meaning-saturated, identity-conferring,

social-humanistic one.

(1987: 176)

Yet, despite being subjectless, cold and impersonal, segmental theorising is typically

associated with ‘agency’, ‘meaning-making’, and so on – actions by human agents.

Ironically, by virtue of their attributed altitudes and associated constellations, cumulative

theories are associated with a cold world of knowledge and segmental theories with a

warm world of knowers, regardless of the characteristics of their discourse.

The moral and political consequences of this positioning results from the ways such

stances have been associated with political domination and liberation; as Gellner

highlights, ‘colonialism went with positivism, decolonization with hermeneutics’ (1994:

26). Any approach concerned with the notion of knowledge as having properties

emergent from but independent of the meaning-making practices of knowers (whether

positivistic or not) is thereby associated with the negative constellation, for ‘objective

facts and generalizations are the expressions and tools of domination’ (Ibid.). In

summary, to draw on Bourdieu, the doxa of fields such as sociology and Education, what

‘goes without saying’, is that there is a Faustian pact to be faced: cumulative theorising is

bought at the cost of losing sight of the human and of being allied with political

domination.

CONCLUSION

Every intellectual and educational field has a basis for legitimation, and in some fields

this is primarily a hierarchy of knowers rather than of knowledges. One must, therefore,

analyse both knowledge and knowers to understand these fields. Previously, social realist

accounts have focused on the emphasis by standpoint theories on the social categories of

25

knowers, though these have relatively minor influence in the current intellectual

landscape. In this chapter I argued we can better understand such fields as underpinned

by axiological cosmologies, and I explored their nature along two dimensions, showing:

• internally, constellations are generated through clustering of stances and actors; and

• externally, these constellations are positively and negatively charged through a

process of axiological condensation.

Crucially, axiological cosmologies involve mediated relations to knowers, specifically

the construction of stances as characterised by differing latitudes and altitudes. This, I

argued, helps explain the marginal status of cumulative theories in fields like sociology

and Education. Explanatory latitude reflects the breadth of phenomena a cumulative

theory can encompass; higher altitude reflects the vertical extension of the theory towards

concepts of greater abstraction and generality. In short, they are the effects of stronger

‘grammaticality’ and stronger ‘verticality’ (chapter 7). The very attributes that enable the

cumulative modality to build knowledge are the basis for their negative positioning: what

enables explanatory latitude is constructed as curtailing creativity and agency; moving

through altitudes is constructed as distancing the theory from experiential reality.

Cumulative theories are thereby positioned within constellations with a negative

axiological charge. Conversely, the characteristics that constrain the capacity of

segmental theories to build cumulative knowledge – their gaze-based relations to data and

limited vertical articulation of concepts – are constructed as enabling greater interpretive

latitude and less altitude above the social world and, thence, positioned within

constellations with a positive axiological charge.

A similar process can be seen in the example of pedagogic approaches. As shown by

Table 8.2, the teacher-centred stances have been associated with:

• being distanced from the real world and using abstract models generated in

laboratories – knowers as subjects appear to occupy ivory towers; and

• a model of learners as compliant, lacking agency, creativity or the capacity to self-

organise or make meanings – an unflattering model of knowers as objects of study.

26

From this perspective, ‘teaching’ is an artificial imposition from above; for example, in

an influential text, Lave and Wenger (1991: 92) claim there should be ‘very little

observable teaching; the more basic phenomenon is learning’. Minimal direction, it is

argued, differs from direct teaching in how it ‘create ways to encourage, guide and enable

learning’ (Oliver & Herrington 2003: 116). In short, teacher-centred stances are

constructed as inhibiting the creativity of learners (limited interpretive latitude) and

disengaged from their practices and needs (high altitude).

It ain’t necessarily so

Must epistemologically stronger theories remain consigned to the margins? I would

argue this is not necessarily the case: axiological cosmologies need not be an essential

feature of fields such as Education. Indeed, a typical key tenet of segmental theories is

the socially constructed nature of knowledge. The axiological cosmologies underpinning

these stances are themselves socially constructed and historically located. The

essentialising and universalising valorisation of ‘agency’, for example, can be shown to

be groundless when one considers its exercise by agents of domination. Belief that

cumulative theories constrain freedom, agency and creativity has been repeatedly

disproven by studies of scientists. Claims that Bourdieu offers licence for free

interpretation of his concepts are unBourdieuan: he argued one needed a sociological

‘gaze’ gained through prolonged apprenticeship and experience to use his framework

(chapter 7). Bourdieu was also scathing about axiological correctness, emphasising that

‘good sentiments make bad sociology’ (Bourdieu et al 1991: 251). In sociology,

segmental theories often criticise essentialising arguments and binaries, yet operate with

essentialised, binary cosmologies. These and numerous other examples can show the

arbitrary nature of axiological cosmologies.

It should not be forgotten that modalities of the legitimation device underpinning social

fields can be changed. There are, however, several obstacles to overcome in struggles for

control of the device. First, axiological cosmologies are underpinned by a knower code,

but the mediated nature of relations to knowers enables actors to misrecognise the basis

of their knowledge claims as rational and empirically-based, giving the appearance of

27

knowledge codes. However, appealing to rigorous empirical research as the arbiter of

debate can quickly lead to the goalposts being shifted. For example, research showing

student-centred approaches have deleterious effects for some social groups may be

countered by claiming that in these particular cases the pedagogy was not enacted

properly. Alternatively, the code clash may become more evident when knowledge-code

theories are dismissed for being essentially conservative, no matter what research may

show. Nonetheless, the knower code underpinning such strategies can remain obscured,

making it difficult to recognise their weak epistemological basis.

A second obstacle is an obsession with discourse. Because relations between stances and

knowers are mediated by the axiological cosmology, the nature of this moral order

becomes a key concern for actors in these kinds of fields, leading to an emphasis on the

moral or political connotations of language rather than its epistemological import.

Axiological cosmologies detach the Word from the World to create emotive symbols that

serve as ‘bondicons’ (Martin & Stenglin 2006) or totems behind which actors rally.

Thus, attempts to emphasise the epistemic relation can be diverted from relations to the

empirical world towards relations among discourses and their axiological meanings (from

the ontic relation to the discursive relation; see chapter 9).

Thirdly, it can be difficult to sustain debate with approaches influenced by axiological

cosmologies, for their freely-floating signifiers have a limited life-span. They condense a

structure of feeling and the capacity of terms to maintain a positive charge may diminish

– the moral battery runs down as they become more widely used, problematising displays

of newness and radicalism. In contrast, it is the relative stability of terms and the explicit

explanation of changes in their referents that provides a source of explanatory power in

knowledge-code fields with epistemological cosmologies. Though theories change over

time, the epistemological battery is recharged through the alternator of external languages

of description and explication of internal relations among concepts. An axiological

battery has no such alternator, so names and concepts serving as bondicons may change

rapidly.

28

Lastly, binary constellations generate a polarised ‘all or nothing’, ‘us and them’ situation

of incommensurable paradigms, problematising constructive debate and limiting the

space of possibles. For example, the opposition outlined in Table 8.1 represents the

universalising of a critique of psychological models of education and precludes the

possibility of sociologically-influence teacher-centred stances, ‘knowledge-centred’

stances, and other practices drawing on both constellations. The most severe approbation

is reserved for actors whose stances do so: they represent the profane polluting the

sacred. Similarly, at the level of knowledge production in the sociology of education,

Bernstein and Bourdieu have often been constructed as oppositional rather than

complementary (e.g. Harker & May 1993). In this chapter I have drawn heavily, as LCT

does generally, on Bourdieuan as well as Bernsteinian ideas, a position that can lead to

enjoying a plague from both their houses. This is particularly problematic for theories

aspiring to explanatory power, for their conclusions are not always what the axiological

cosmology demands. As Mary Douglas described Bernstein:

Neither fish, flesh nor fowl – some tribes reject and fear anomalous beasts, some

revere them. In sociology, Professor Bernstein is to some a fearsome scaly

monster, cutting across all the tidy categories. The light he sheds on thoughts we

would prefer to keep veiled is often cruel. No wonder he holds an anomalous

place in his profession.

(1975: 174)

So, what hope for change? Cumulative theories are often the dominated, marginalised

and silenced Other in educational and sociological debates; the mainstream is dominated

by segmental theories, in denial at their social and institutional power. Moreover, as

Popper argued, ‘no rational argument will have a rational effect on a man [sic] who does

not want to adopt a rational attitude’ (1947: 231). The truth is no guarantee of belief; and

belief is no guarantee of the truth. However, there remains belief in the truth, or at least

in open, rational debate. As Bourdieu would argue, the illusio of intellectual fields is that

they aim to build explanations of the world, based on reason, rigour, theoretical elegance

and empirical evidence rather than blind faith. Not all is doom and gloom. Not everyone

has an allegiance to an approach rather than to a problem. Moreover, most actors are

29

keenly aware of pressing issues in education and society and eager to engage with

practices and theories that are both truly ‘critical’ of social inequities and constructive in

how these can be overcome. Revealing the ways segmental theories may work against

such aims by serving the interests of dominant social groups is thus important, as is

research showing the capacity of cumulative theories to provide powerful explanations

with practical implications (see chapter 9). Similarly, unmasking the workings of

cosmologies can help open spaces for ways of working that emphasise ontology and

epistemology rather than merely axiology. This is critical, for, as Douglas argued of

curricular cosmologies, ‘Unless we can make the process visible, we are the victims’

(1973: 10).

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Smolin, L. (2006) The Trouble With Physics. London, Penguin.

1 The Tractatus-style first half of Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture

(Bourdieu & Passeron 1977) and highly theoretical first part of Distinction (Bourdieu

1984) are counter-examples, but the rest of both texts are predominantly empirically-

based descriptions. 2 This is not necessarily the case; see Smolin (2006) on the non-epistemological

considerations (what physicists call ‘sociology’) dominating funding and appointments in

nuclear physics. Whether a field is dominated by epistemological or axiological

cosmologies is always subject to empirical study. 3 See chapter 9 for a brief description of these principles. See Maton (2005a) for

discussion of Autonomy in relation to Bourdieu’s framework; and Maton (2005b) for a

major case study using Autonomy, Density, Specialisation and Temporality. 4 Heuristically using a single letter (X) may give the impression of severe reductionism.

See chapter 9 on the capacity for LCT to generate very high levels of delicacy when

analysing empirical data. 5 Using systemic functional linguistics (e.g. Martin 1992, 2006, 2008), they represent

different positions along the ‘individuation / affiliation’ cline, towards the ‘persona’ or

‘individual’ (gaze) and ‘social’ or ‘culture’ (cosmology) poles. The differential

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distribution of gazes among actors within a social field and their relations to its dominant

cosmology is subject to empirical enquiry. 6 The resulting structure is similar to Bourdieu’s relational ‘field of stances’, but

Bourdieu reduces this to a reflection of the ‘field of positions’ (relational positions of

actors). As in chapter 2, I am arguing the field of stances has its own relative autonomy

from, and structuring significance for the field of positions. 7 Such ideas represent taken-for-granted assumptions that are so widespread across the

literature that it would be churlish to cite specific examples of texts at this point. 8 See, for example, Bourne 2003, Morais et al. 2004 and Moss 2006. Similarly, Chen et

al (in press) shows that for students from a Chinese educational background,

constructivist pedagogy can be disempowering, alienating and marginalising. 9 See Bennett et a.l (2008) and Bennett & Maton (2010) for critiques of such claims

within educational technology research. 10 Similarly, see Moore (in press) on how ‘disciplinarity’ has become constructed as

hierarchical and socially reactionary, and ‘interdisciplinarity’ as egalitarian and

progressive. 11 Space precludes discussion of examples here, but see almost any use of ‘habitus’,

‘governmentality’ or ‘biopower’ in sociology of education articles.